"This brings me to another subject to which I desire to call your

immediate attention. I wish her to select a couple of dresses

suitable for your wear on the night of our reception-party, and at

others which will, undoubtedly, be given in our honor. She objects

to doing this unless I obtain from you a written request that she

should thus aid me. She fears you may consider her action 'premature

and officious.' Write to her at once, requesting her to do this

sisterly favor for you, setting forth your distance from the city,

the meagre assortment of the goods to be had in the Richmond stores,

etc., and giving her carte blanche as to cost and style. It will be

an inestimable advantage to your appearance on the occasions named

should she oblige you in this particular. I earnestly desire that

you should look your best at your introduction to her."

"'Maroon and green!' a 'baronial' hall, and new party-dresses for

insignificant me!" Mabel stopped to say aloud in great amusement.

"What would my sage brother have said to such paltry memoranda six

months ago? He is an apt scholar, or he has an able teacher. Ah,

well! love is a marvellous transmogrifier!"

With this apothegm from the storehouse of her lately acquired

wisdom, she passed to the next paragraph.

"Now for another matter about which I meant to write to you

yesterday, but I was prevented by our expedition to Lowell. The

evenings I of course devote to Clara. I have not been so engrossed

by my own very important concerns as to neglect yours. I stopped a

day in Philadelphia, illy as I could afford the time, to make such

investigations as I could, without exciting invidious suspicion,

into the character of the person whom I found domesticated at

Ridgeley on my return from my summer tour. The information I picked

up in that cautious city was so meagre and tantalizing as to provoke

me into the belief that he had selected his references with an eye

to the slenderness of their knowledge of his personal history.

Accident, however, has since placed within my reach a means of

learning all that I wish to know. Without wearying you with

explanations, which, indeed, I have no time to write--being engaged

to drive out with Clara in an hour from this time--I will transcribe

a portion of a letter received by me, two days since, from a

gentleman of unexceptional standing, and upon whose word you may

safely depend.

"He says: 'In reply to your queries as to my acquaintanceship with

one Frederic Chilton, now a practising lawyer in the city of

Philadelphia, I would, if conscience permitted, repay your frankness

by evasion of a disagreeable truth. But in the circumstances which

induced your appeal, I have no option. Hesitation or concealment

would be unkind and dishonorable. I knew the man you speak of

well--I may say intimately, while we were fellow-students in the----

law school, in 18--. He was then--what I have but too much reason

for believing him at this day--a plausible, unprincipled man of

pleasure. Our intercourse, which commenced at the card-table,

terminated with a severe horsewhipping I administered to him in

punishment of an offence offered a married lady--a relative of my

own. Taking advantage of the protracted absence of her husband, who

was a naval officer, he offered her many attentions, received by

herself as tokens of innocent and friendly regard, until he forgot

himself so far as to make her open and insulting proposals, even

urging her to consent to an elopement, and threatening, in the event

of her refusal, to ruin her by infamous calumnies. Her father was

infirm; her husband in a foreign land. His base persecution would

have met with no chastisement, had not I espoused the terrified

woman's cause. These are the bare facts of the case. He merited a

flogging--as you, a chivalric Virginian, will admit. I--a Northern

man, with cooler blood, but I hope, as true a sense of honor and

right as your own--inflicted this, as I am prepared to testify

before any number of witnesses.'"




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